Pick Up The Pieces
by Weeping-willows18
Summary: Jack's life has only gotten better since he left his Brooklyn high school. The world hasn't been as kind to his former classmate & prom queen Charlotte Woods, and it will take a special kind of magic to put her back together. A kind of magic she just might find in Jack. What happens when they meet two years after graduation in a Vegas parking lot? JackxOC
1. Chapter 1

**Story Title**: Pick Up the Pieces

**Chapter**: One

**Words**: 1,300+

**Chapter Summary**: They thought they would never see each other after graduation. So they went their separate ways, Jack Wilder running toward his future, and Charlotte running from her past. Until one summer day, when they stumble.

_"I'm out of touch,_

_ I'm out love." _

Charlotte Woods remembered slamming her bedroom door and screaming to no one in particular that it had to be the worst day of her entire life on several occasions. Whether it had been a ruined pair of jeans, the ending of yet another feeble relationship, or a lack of access granted by her parents to the keys of the Mercedes-Benz that sat so lonely in the garage, Charlotte was positive each time that it couldn't get any worse.

If her present self could have spoken to the sixteen-year-old edition, the elder would have laughed in her face. Because each teenage drama-queen disappointment was obscured by this one.

Charlotte was sure the audition had gone perfectly. As her icy blue eyes scanned over the crowd of hopefuls, there was not a single doubt in her mind that she had this job in the bag. With each set of choreography nailed as the day progressed, this certainty was only solidified.

And it all came crashing down. She had fallen. Couldn't she at least aim for something a little more memorable? Maybe fainting, or giving birth? Why did she have to be the girl who was given the boot on account of her just dropping like a fly. In the final round of the try-out, with the herd thinned to four leotard-clad and smiling dancers, her feet came down a bit too quickly and her grande jete ended with her in a heap on the linoleum floor. That's enough. Thanks for coming in. We'll call you if there's any news.

The casting directors had been all saccharine grins and sympathetic words, but Charlotte knew enough about this dammed city to know that her phone would be staying dormant. She could kiss the position back-up dancing in an "up-and-coming" band's new show on the Vegas strip good-bye. It was back to waitressing tables in a diner on the edge of town until the next time she could worm her way into an audition.

She huffed past the hallway lined with dancers crouching next to water bottles and canvas bags, stretching their nimble bodies and scoping out the competition. A mere hour ago, she had been in the same place. It took all her will power to refrain from whispering to them, "Don't bother." Charlotte used her hip to push open the exit door.

Nevada summer greeted her with what felt like a slap across the face. The pavement of the parking lot bordering the rehearsal complex acted as a magnifying glass on the July heat. If only her high school "friends" could see her now. She found it comical at its best; the fact that they were all so sure the Great Charlotte Woods would be on Broadway by now. Sorry to disappoint ladies, but I'm one bad audition away from spending the rest of my able-bodied days as a show girl.

Their graduating class had been far from psychic, apparently. Their Most Likely To Be Famous was passing the time, which her peers had devoted to college, in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment, living off microwave noodles and Diet Coke. The dancer flung her bag over her shoulder and tied her now unruly blond waves from her face and strode with her head down, trying to get to her car without anything else catastrophic happening.

She probably would have done it, too, had it not been for Jack Wilder making the same mistake of staring at the asphalt as he walked when he should have been keeping an eye out for former high school classmates.

The collision wasn't any more graceful than Charlotte's previous fall, though she did manage to stay on her feet. Her carried load didn't fare so well. "I'm sorry..." She muttered as she scrambled to pick up her things.

"Here, let me help you with that," a familiar voice came from above her. The man that had caused the mishap bent down to lift a paper with a series of large numbers printed on it, "Let me guess, a dancer?" Jack mused as he examined the paper, not bothering to glance up at the victim of his carelessness. "I'm no mentalist, but..."

His voice died when he finally did, however. He was faced with none other than Charlotte Woods, a girl he swore at graduation he would never again be unfortunate enough to come across. Because back in the days of gym class and awkward first kisses, she was the only one who seemed above it all. Yeah, that girl. The one who, if she were to step in gum, the entire student body would have lined up around the block to scrape it off the bottom of her shoe with a toothbrush for her. Yet, here they were. Charlotte Woods and Jack Wilder meeting on a Vegas parking lot two years later.

"Charlotte?"

The blonde's head flicked up upon hearing her name. No one in this town knew her name. She looked into the eyes of Jack Wilder, a face she hadn't seen in, what, two years? A face that had aged rather well, from the looks of it.

It was true what they about all attempts to run from your past failing. And Charlotte had been running pretty quickly. Apparently, the boy who sat alone in the cafeteria fiddling with a stack of playing cards had caught up to her. "Jack."

"What are you doing here?" They said simultaneously. The two laughed momentarily before at the coincidence before once again realize that it was one of epic proportions.

"Well, you had guessed correctly. Dancer." Charlotte explained, motioning to her tell-tale apparel, "And now let me guess..." She took in his leather jacket, black jeans, and mischievous smirk, "Hmm... card dealer?"

"Magician."

The former cheerleader was taken aback. "As in rabbit-out-the-hat magician?"

Jack chuckled. Charlotte pretended not to note how nice of a laugh he had. "As in, uh..." He pointed past her.

Charlotte spun and followed his direction. Her eyes landed on a bill-board, of all things, advertising the Four Horsemen, a quartet of rather sophisticated looking magicians. She'd heard all about their nightly performances; it was one of the hottest tickets in Vegas. She had neglected to ever actually look at any of the million advertisements, because then she would have noticed that her fellow alumni was one fourth of it. "Oh." The former cheerleader nodded casually.

"Yeah. I was actually just leaving a rehearsal." Jack returned his hand to his pocket and discreetly assessed the girl before him. Sure, she was pretty in that intimidating way of her kind, just as she had always been, but something was different. Charlotte Woods had changed. She no longer stood like a queen, and her eyes no longer burnt with ambition and intensity. If this was what the epilogue of a high school success story looked like, he was thankful his was a failure. "Hey, Charlotte?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Are you telling the truth?"

The dancer hesitated before releasing a small "No."

The magician continued the seemingly pointless interrogation, "Where are you heading now?"

"I'm not sure. Home, probably. Maybe the airport so I can get a one-way ticket back to New York."

Jack had been exposed to first-class burn-outs, and found it more likely that she'd be heading back to a dingy apartment on the outskirts of town to spend the night downtrodden and alone. And he couldn't just let her go her separate way with that information in mind. "Hey, I'm a pretty good listener if that's what you need. Maybe you could delay your flight just for the evening?"

The half-coy and half-hopeful smile he wore forced Charlotte to fabricate one of her own. "I might be able to arrange that."

Maybe it wasn't the worst day of her life, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Story Title: **Pick Up the Pieces

**Chapter: **Two

**Words:** 1,400+

**Chapter Summary: **Once upon a time, a girl thought she was invincible and a boy thought he was invisible. Turns out, they were both wrong.

**Author's notes: **Thank you so much for the kind reviews! I wasn't planning on continuing this story just because I have so many going right now, but after seeing how much you guys enjoyed it, I decided to try and update whenever possible. I can't say how often that will be, but I will try my best. Thanks again!

* * *

_"If you're broken, I will mend you"_

Charlotte glanced at her hand for what had to be the seven-millionth time since Jack had scribbled his address on it a few hours prior. The blue ink from a pen he had produced from his jacket pocket was beginning to smear across her palm, transforming four's into nine's and seven's into two's. She could barely make out the words: _ 2895 E. Charleston Ave, Number 113, second floor. _

This was it. Charlotte stuffed her hand back in her pockets and looked up at the adobe apartment building rising up before her, illuminated by dim street lights and the meager glowing of a full moon. She strode up to the door to an empty lobby and pulled it open.

Flourescent lamps installed into the ceiling flickered down, the only sound other than Charlotte's footsteps leading to the elevator. She pressed the 'up' button, sending the elevator whirring and buzzing before opening slowly.

With a sigh, she stepped on and thought, not for the first time, what she was doing there. A starry-eyed high school Charlotte would have just scoffed at Jack's offer and washed it away with a squirt of scented hand sanitizer. But for some reason, that shameless grin of his made her believe the whole situation was completely normal.

After all, she'd lived in Vegas for over a year now. Charlotte had done some bizarre things that would make hanging out with an old classmate seem like an absolute snooze.

_Ding. _

The doors slid open at last, displaying a long hallway in front of her. Eyeing the numbers mounted on the walls next to each apartment, Charlotte walked for what seemed like ages before she arrived at number 113.

Moments after knocking, the door opened promptly, revealing a smiling Jack in the doorway. "Charlotte, you came!"

The dancer resisted the strong urge to spit out, _"Excellent observation. Aristotle would be impressed". _

She just gave a weak laugh in return.

"Well, come on in."

Several minutes, a semi-awkward greeting, and a nervous apology for the mess, Jack held out a splayed deck of cards out to Charlotte from his place next to her on the sofa in his living room. "Pick a card."

She rolled her eyes and said in reply, "You really are into the whole magician life-style, aren't you?"

Jack shrugged, "It's not so much a life-style as it a life-_out-of-_style. Parlor tricks are a lost art. And everyone knows lost arts are the best way to break the ice."

Giving in, Charlotte pulled from the deck a card which, with a glance, she found was the ace of spades. "Okay. Got it."

"Put it back in."

She did as told and watched as Jack shuffled the stack intricately, sending the cards flying but always managing to keep them within his grasp. He settled them back into their original formation and lifted the card on top. The ace of spades. "Is this your card?"

"No."

"No?!"

"I'm kidding," Charlotte said with a laugh, "Yeah, it's my card."

Jack let out a sigh of relief, "Don't scare me like that!"

"It was just too tempting," The dancer pulled her legs under her, sitting up on the leather couch and releasing a bubbling laugh. "How do you do that, anyway?"

"Magic," Jack told her with a stoic expression.

"Oh, please. Everyone knows there's no such thing as magic. It's an illusion, right?"

Jack drew back as if offended by Charlotte's claims, "Of course there's such thing as magic! There's no other explanation for why Charlotte Woods and I are sitting in my living room shooting the breeze."

Charlotte rolled her eyes and sat her plastic cup filled with soda on the coffee table, cutting the affable mood short, "Jack, I thought it was established that I'm not the same girl I was when I was seventeen."

"It has been," the magician shrugged, "But it's still fun to tease you about."

She released an uneasy chuckle, because it was making her pretty uncomfortable how easy it was to talk to him. How it all felt natural, like they had been friends forever. Charlotte Woods, head cheerleader and resident terrorizor of anyone who wasn't exactly like everyone else, and Jack Wilder, the boy who was nothing like _anyone_ else, were not supposed to get along.

But here they were, sitting in his shockingly neatapartment, playing cards and listening to a Beatles album on repeat. Huh.

"This place is pretty nice, actually." Charlotte mused as she looked around the living room. As far as twenty-something apartments go, it really wasn't bad. In front of the couch was a small T.V. was perched on a mock-mahogany table, next to a bookshelf housing anything but novels. The walls were painted a navy blue color, though it was hard to tell due to tell the yellow-tinted lighting emitted by a few scattered lamps. Jack's apartment seemed to lack any real installation pieces, nothing nailed down and permanant. Cleary the interior was designed with leaving in mind. Charlotte could tell because hers was the exact same way.

"So is the part of the night when you explain to me how the hell you ended up here?" Jack asked, half joking and half serious.

"It's a long story," Charlotte stated, clearly not wanting to elaborate.

"Please?"

"It's really, _really _long."

"I have time,"

"I know you do," The blond snapped, her patience running out, "But when someone says it's a long story, it's probably not so much long as it painful and shameful and depressing. And obviously it's not going well, considering you found me storming out of an audition, during which I was embarrassing myself in front of the biggest casting directors in town. Not everyone is a cute twenty-year-old who can do card tricks and get the world handed to him on a silver platter. The real world is a really hard place to live, not that someone like you would understand that."

The silence in the moments that followed was the loudest and scariest either of them had ever experienced. Jack drew back like a child being scolded by a teacher, his brown eyes looking wounded.

Charlotte opened her mouth to form an apology, but all she could force out was a string of stammering syllables, "I-uh, I-I'm, um, I-"

She closed her eyes and took a breath, knowing she would need to gather herself if she wanted to salvage what was left of their improbable yet easy atmosphere, "I'm sorry."

The magician shook his head at the ground, not meeting Charlotte's eyes, "It's okay," his voice came and left swiftly, leaving them once again in that ugly absence of... anything.

_Nice going, Charlotte. The guy invites you over after you tormet him for four years and then you decide to blow a fuse at him. You really know how to let the good times roll. _

The dancer scoffed at her own misfortunes, "You can kick me out now. I wouldn't blame you."

"No, really," Jack assured her, "It's fine. You didn't know what you were saying."

He didn't mean for it to sting, but it did. _You didn't know what you were saying, and you didn't know how much it hurt. _

"I'm sorry." Charlotte blurted out, due to a renewed feeling of guilt. Damn puppy dog eyes.

"Charlotte, don't apologize," Jack insisted.

"Sor-" The blond inhaled sharply, "I mean... okay."

Jack smiled, genuinely happy this time. Despite that the day ha started out atrociously, despite that she and him were supposed to be enemies, despite that she had always hated her smile, despite all her inhibitions, she returned it without hesitation.


End file.
